click to read pdf file - The Preterist Archive

LOCUSTA 205
CHAPTER XXV
LOCUSTA.
'
Circe inter vernas nota Neronis.'
TURNUS, Fr.
NERO had been angered beyond measure by the failure of both
his attempts upon the life of his brother, but he had also been
a little terrified. A feeling of the eternal sanctity of the moral
law had scarcely ever found a place in his slight and frivolous
mind ;
but he was by no means free from superstition. He
did not believe seriously in the gods but he believed more or
;
less in omens, and for a time he wavered in the dreadful purpose
of committing his earliest unpardonable crime.
But he could not waver long. Britannicus was rapidly approaching
his fifteenth year. It was evident that he was also
developing new powers. He was already nearly as tall as
Nero, and while Nero's early beauty was beginning to fade the
face of Britannicus became constantly nobler. All this Nero
observed with deepening rancour, and to this was added a
secret terror. He began to fear lest the Prsetorians should
find out their mistake in rejecting this princely boy for one
who, in spite of his small accomplishments, was so far his inferior.
He never visited Agrippina without noticing that in
some way she regarded Britannicus, if not as the mainstay of
her hopes, at least as the ultimate resource of her vengeance
and despair.
But it was Sophonius Tigellinus who had the chief hand in
goading Nero to the final consummation of his guilt. The
Emperor was not by nature sanguinary his
; cruelty was only
developed amid the rank growth of his other vices.
He was planning with Tigellinus a banquet of unusual
splendour
All Souls' Day,
February 7.
which was to be held at the Feralia the Roman
a festival in honour of the dead on
'
You will have to give another banquet, Caesar,' said Tigellinus,
' on the Ides (February 13).'